why was Socrates Willing to die?
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Answer:
Plato wanted to portray Socrates not just as a great philosopher, but as an exemplar of the craft, his life a paragon and a model. ... Socrates was condemned to death in 399 BC after he was found guilty of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens.
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Explanation:
Socrates believed that a city-state (polis) is like a ship; to be able to travel safely across the seas of history, it must be characterized by a mindset and a system that put the common good above the individual. It was Socrates—at least as Plato writes in his works—who proposed that the philosophers be compelled to participate in politics, whether they like it or not; being the ones who had seen the Good and had a superior understanding of the notions of truth and virtue, they were the only ones who could rule the city-state well, even at the expense of their own time and pleasure. Now, a large part of any city-state’s system of governance is its laws. Socrates had been sentenced to death by a court of law, constituted of a large number of his fellow citizens as jury. To escape the death penalty would be to attempt to shake down the verdict of the jury and, subsequently, order and the rule of law in the city. Knowing that he was a very influential figure, Socrates knew that his students would eventually be disappointed by his cowardice and his enemies would seize the opportunity to attack his teachings, claiming he was a hypocrite. For Socrates, philosophy was primarily a way of life, not merely a mental construction. In Plato’s Crito (43a), Socrates says that, should he attempt to flee, the Laws themselves would appear before him and ask him: “O Socrates, tell us, why do you want to destroy us and this city? Don’t you know that a city where court verdicts are nullified by individual citizens cannot survive for long?”
Moreover, Socrates knew that, if he escaped, he’d have to leave Athens for ever and live as an exile for the rest of his days. He couldn’t bear that. For most Greeks, and even more for him, exile and death were rather alike. It was a fundamental Classical Greek notion that a person flourishes and lives better in their own city. Exiles felt like flowers uprooted from the earth and cast away. Socrates loved his city and was rather unwilling to leave it, even for a small journey.